Prowling about Panama

by George A. Miller

Readers of Robinson Crusoe associate the Caribbean Sea with piracy and rum, but usually have few other ideas on the subject. Most people of the United States have scarcely so much as heard that there be any Caribbean world except that it is somewhere in the tropics.

To be sure, the Caribbean Sea has a way of impressing itself upon those who sail its troubled tides. Perhaps the shades of the villains who used to cross these waters on their murderous expeditions still linger to raise the adverse winds and toss the seasick passenger in his misery. Certain it is that very few travelers have any affection for the seven hundred miles of salt water between the Mosquito Coast and the islands so notorious in the sixteenth century.

It is with something of surprise, then, that the prowler about Panama learns of a homogeneous population living on the chain of islands that begins below Porto Rico and swings downward in a graceful curve to the tip of the South American coast. These Lesser Antilles mark the eastern boundaries of the famous, or infamous, Caribbean Sea. Though small in size, their considerable numbers and large populations make them important. If they are not so well known now, at least they have the distinction of having been discovered by Columbus when he set out to find a way to the East Indies and discovered the West Indies instead.

COSTA RICA FARM HOME

The political complexion of these islands varies greatly. Government is shared by Spain, France, England, and the United States, and the languages spoken conform to the governing power. The purchase of the Danish West Indies has given the United States a permanent and prominent influence in the group.

No account of matters Panamanian could omit reference to the people of this West Indian world. From the beginning of Panama's history Caribbean adventurers have crossed the sea in any craft that would float, and have played a large part in the restless events of the Isthmus. West Indian influence and blood were mingled with the history of the Isthmus for four hundred years, and in these last days it has been the West Indian who furnished the labor that dug the Panama Canal, and who still contributes the brawn and perspiration for the work of the Canal Zone. Twenty-five thousand of these people live on or near the Zone and are employed by its government, and probably as many more live near by and mingle with the native life of Panama. All through the interior there are always some West Indians.

Without the West Indian the digging of the Canal would not have been impossible, but would have been much more difficult. Chinese coolies would have cost more to import and could hardly have worked for less money. Considering the cost of living on the Canal Zone, the West Indian has furnished some of the cheapest labor in the world. In construction days the nine or ten cents an hour wage was more than the black man had received at home, but his living expenses on the Zone were very much higher than on the Caribbean Islands. The wage scale of the West Indian on the Canal Zone has been revised and increased several times by the American government in an effort to keep pace with the rising cost of living; but it must be said that the laborer's wage of about thirty dollars a month, with from three dollars to six dollars deducted for the rent of two rooms, does not afford a very sumptuous living for a man and his family. The "silver" man on the Zone pays the same price for his food and clothes as does the "gold" white man who receives twenty-five per cent higher wages than is paid for the same work in the States, and in addition has a furnished apartment or cottage free of rent cost. The men on the "gold" rate complain of the high cost of living. What they would do if reduced to one sixth of their present wages they do not stop to consider. It is not a pleasant subject to face, but it is hoped that the wages of the West Indian may be lifted to the point where he can at least buy food enough to keep him in good physical condition.

The West Indies furnishes the plantation labor of Panama and Costa Rica, without which there would be little plantation work done. In the hot and humid banana groves he endures the temperature and handles the huge banana bunches as though born for the job, as perhaps he is. Out from Almirante and Puerto Limon range the tracks of the plantation railroads through hundreds of miles of banana forests, where the black man supplies the labor for the largest farms in the world. Forty or fifty thousand of these people live on and about the plantations of the Atlantic coast and without them the largest agricultural enterprise ever carried on under one management would collapse.

The West Indian on the Isthmus is not the West Indian at home. He may live and die on the mainland, but he thinks in terms of the islands from which he came. Like the American Negro, he is of African descent, but his African origin is so remote that no trace of it remains in his consciousness, though it is evident in his psychology. Most of the West Indians about the Canal Zone dream of returning to the islands again.